May 26, 2008

Well this was fun

There have been some ripping storms here. We drove 40 miles in one last night, the Pater familias decreeing Sunday night to be the best time for a family trip to Home Depot®. This was a great idea because we love bonding. We love car rides when the A/C is broke. And we really really love Home Depot®. But I could tell this was going to be good. I had been watching the sky. True to that violent blue, it was the worst weather we've ever been on the road in. It was brilliant and shaking and then there was hail and all the while the pounding rain. I'm 93% sure we drove half the trip in a zigzaggy pattern through some fields and creeks and things as the highway got more and more elusive but no one could see to tell. I was in love with it. Mum was in hate with it. The kids in the back were taking sides and saying woah a lot. The Pater familias, stoic. We all couldn't stop watching, even though we were ordered from the front to stop breathing because the windshield was fogged over. There are bad times for your A/C and defroster to break and then there are bad times. I was thinking too, about how even though I question most of his decisions I have never been afraid while my father's hand was on the wheel. Home Depot® was closed by the way. Betting on any decent establishment being open at 9pm on a Sunday while a tornado was forming one county away might have been yet another questionable decision, but you didn't hear it from me. There have been some certain times living with my dotty, unbalanced family of W's that I wouldn't have liked to miss.

The best thing was being silent and sitting in the lumberyard entrance with the windows down, watching water gust under the streetlights, and hearing faintly the wail of storm sirens. I hadn't heard that sound since I was very small.